


One Camp To Another

by Kit



Category: Tamora Pierce - Fandom
Genre: F/F, Goldenlake, SMACKDOWN 2010
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-06
Updated: 2010-02-06
Packaged: 2017-10-07 02:05:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/60235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kit/pseuds/Kit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Give me my <i>name</i>, Lady Knight." It is difficult to lie, under griffin-shadow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Camp To Another

**Author's Note:**

> Written in round 1/H of [ Goldenlake's SMACKDOWN](http://fiefgoldenlake.proboards.com/index.cgi): Who shall win the hand of Keladry of Mindelan?

Two knights on their way from one camp to another, in the baking sun.

Glints of copper and orange flecked a sky bleached the sort of tight, tired blue that seemed to vibrate in the heat, shimmering around wing-shadows and feather tips that were _almost _eagle. On the ground, cicadas managed to distort growling, peak-shifting cries into something lost, and far away. But the griffins still passed over them, and there could be no lies about it.

 “Nasty little beggar, wasn’t he?”

“Lioness?”

Alanna snorted. “The _griffin. _The misbegotten get, perhaps, of those shadows back there.”

Kel almost smiled. “No, my lady. His family is a good bit farther west. Daine told me they don’t really move beyond their territories, even when hunting. Besides,” a pause, time to look across and down at her companion, helmless and exasperated on a horse whose pedigree, perhaps, went beyond Mindelan and into the Book of Gold. Peachblossom snorted, but did not kick out as Kel edged him closer to woman and mount. “My sword is named after him, and is _hardly _misbegotten.”

“Sometimes I’m _still _not sure when you’re joking,” Alanna mused. Reaching out, ignoring Peachblossom’s half-snap of protest and the smallest of gasps from Keladry, Alanna took one of her hands, running her thumb over the pitted skin between Kel’s thumb and forefinger, then down in a curious swipe to her wrist.

“Lioness?”

“Don’t worry.” Alanna’s voice felt gruff in her own mouth, catching in her throat.  “And tell your beast—and I know you can—that I shall return your hand. It’s just...”

“Lioness?”

“It’s that these scars, on your hands…it was a strange love you had for the beast, is all.” Alanna coughed; narrowed violet eyes. “And it’s _Alanna_, Kel, by all the—”

Another yowl-shriek, twisted by distance and ground, heat and insects.

“Give me my _name_, Lady Knight.”

Kel shifted, Peachblossom snorting beneath her, as Alanna’s thumb pressed into the pulse at her wrist, strangely sweet. Warm, trodden grass filled the air around them, thick and heavy and prone to make her face flush and her eyes water. _She has my hand_... the thought was both insane and inane at the same time, and yet Kel felt the skin around her eyes tightening into a smile. She felt the minute twitch of her lips, the small shift of skin over her nose—the bubble of happiness in her heart and throat.

“_You can’t lie near a griffin_,” Daine had told her. So, there was truth to this giddiness. More to think about. _You can_ lie _by a…oh, honestly!_

“You’re smiling,” Alanna said, nonplussed. “And you haven’t got a lance in your hand and I’m not some old man with his rear in the dust.”

“It’s been known to happen,” Kel said quietly. “Smiling, I mean. You know me.” Another pause. Strange words, from the same place as that bubble, that giddiness, turned heady in the grass and sky and the heat. “You’ve watched me.”

“You,” said Alanna of Pirate’s Swoop and Olau, knight of the realm, King’s Champion, “Are the most splendid thing I have ever seen.”

 


End file.
